


intertwined

by timbre



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Grinding, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Incest, It's a twin thing, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Riding, Sibling Incest, Somnophilia, Time Skips, Twincest, Vaginal Sex, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-11 17:54:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20550281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timbre/pseuds/timbre
Summary: Nell and Luke through the years.





	intertwined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hearthouses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearthouses/gifts).

> I was so, so excited to write this pairing for you! I hope you enjoy, and happy Relationshipping. :)  
The underage tag is because Luke and Nell are 16 in the flashbacks that take place in 2002. If anyone is uncomfortable with reading underage, you can skip the flashback that takes place on November 26, 2002.

**May 2nd, 2002**

They’re not kids anymore, Nell knows that. She can’t just climb into bed with Luke whenever she thinks she sees a ghost. 

But she’s laying there in the dark, petrified, icy terror shooting through her limbs, and all she wants is to cry out for Luke. She feels like she’s made of lead. Her limbs are impossibly heavy, her chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. She’s frozen. All but her eyes, which flick around, frantic, in the dark. She just wants to close them. She’s terrified she’ll see _her_. 

Above her, in his bunk bed, Luke stirs. 

“Nell?” 

His voice is barely a croak, but it still cuts through her panic like a knife. 

Her fingertips twitch. 

Above her, Luke rustles around some more. Nell manages to whimper. 

“Oh,” Luke says quietly, and then he’s climbing down the ladder and climbing onto her bed. 

As soon as he’s near her, she can smell the alcohol on his breath. Beer, stolen from their aunt, or gotten from other kids at school, maybe. These days, it’s rare that he doesn’t come home late, stumbling drunkenly into the darkness of their room and trying not to wake her. (She always pretends to be asleep, but the truth is, she can’t sleep when he’s gone.) 

His barriers are down. He lets himself get close to her in a way that they haven’t really been since they were kids. His body would be right up against hers, if not for the bedsheets separating them. He tilts his head onto her shoulder, grabs her left hand. She manages to squeeze it. 

“One,” he mumbles into her neck, and Nell immediately knows what he’s doing. She squeezes again. 

“Two,” he says. 

_Squeeze._

“Three.” 

By four, she’s able to say the number with him, if only in a whisper. On five, the feeling is returning to her arms and legs. Six, she thinks she could sit up, if she wanted to. (She doesn’t.) (She wants them both to stay exactly how they are.) 

“Seven.”  
  
They say it in unison and finally the tightness in Nell’s chest subsides, and she knows the episode is over. She thinks Luke knows too, but he hasn’t moved. His breath is hot on her neck. He isn’t letting go of her hand. 

She can move now, she’s able to, but she stays painfully still, as if any small move might scare Luke away like a rabbit. She desperately wants him to stay there with her all night, to feel his presence there with her if she wakes up again. She doesn’t want him to leave her side. (Ever.) They’re safe when they’re together. 

“Don’t worry,” Luke’s voice comes suddenly, his face still buried in her neck. “Not leaving you, Nell.” 

He lifts his head and their eyes meet, just for a moment. His eyes are glassy; he’s still drunk, she supposes. And then he tilts his head down and kisses her cheek. Well. Her jaw, really. Almost her neck. White-hot shock shoots down her spine at the contact. He lingers there, too long to be normal (but was any of it normal, really, climbing into bed with his sixteen year old twin sister and holding her hand to get her through an episode?) and then his head drops back down into that space between her shoulder and her neck, and he’s asleep just like that. 

Nell doesn’t sleep for hours, but for once, it’s not because she’s afraid. 

  


**January 28, 2019**

It’s been three months since Nell died. 

It’s been two since Luke started seeing her again. 

When she died, a piece of him felt like it died too. He’s managed to stay clean, but it’s _hard_. On the worst days, he just sits in his room, staring at nothing, repeating a phrase over and over:  
  
“There’s no without. I am not gone.” 

He tries to remember her from that night, in the house. The old Nell. A Nell he hadn’t seen in many years before that. A Nell with light behind her eyes. 

But it’s hard. His memories are hazy. He was fading in and out of consciousness that whole night. The clearest thing he can remember are her words, as she held his hand. _There’s no without. I am not gone._

_She’s not gone._

He says it to himself nearly every night the first month after Nell dies. 

And then, one night, like a wish, she’s there. 

He’s got his head buried in his hands, and then he looks up, and there she is, standing in front of him in a blue dress, smiling. She looks beautiful. 

“I’m here, Luke,” she says, and she holds him again, like she hadn’t in so long. He bites back tears and collapses into her arms. 

Despite his initial euphoria at her reappearance, as the weeks go on, Luke starts to doubt. This Nell seems… too perfect. Something nags at him. Something their father had said to him, at Nell’s funeral. About seeing Olivia. About how she wasn’t a ghost, but… a wish. 

Nell is always there when he needs her. She strokes his hair and murmurs sweet words to him at night, when things get hard and he gets cravings again. She never gets angry or fed up with him. 

But she’s not Nell. 

She’s not the _real_ Nell. She’s not the Nell that Luke knows belongs to the house now. She’s just a figment, something he’s created for himself to cope with the reality that’s too painful to handle. Just like Olivia was for Hugh. 

This Nell is a bandaid, a bandaid on a gaping wound that Luke has in his chest, and she won’t always be enough. 

  


**November 26, 2002**

Nell is dreaming. It’s weird, like most of her dreams are, like they have been since she was a kid. She’s in a house—not _the _house, but a big house—trying a key in all the doors she comes across. It works in some, it opens them, but she keeps shutting them and moving on to the next. They don’t have what she’s looking for. Not that she knows what that is. The hallways goes on forever. 

She’s turning the key in another lock when she’s suddenly awakened. She blinks at the ceiling, feeling displaced for a second. It’s another second before she realizes what woke her. 

Luke is beside her in bed, still asleep. After Nell’s episode in May, it becomes more common for her and Luke to spend the night in the other’s bed. It’s kind of an unspoken thing. They don’t need to exchange words to know when the other doesn’t want to be alone. They still sleep in the same room after all (Nell dreads the day that Theo moves out and Luke is offered her old bedroom) so what difference does it make, really, if they’re just that much closer? 

Luke’s presence, though, isn’t what woke her. It’s the way he’s pressed up against her side, his face buried in her neck, squirming and letting out muffled whimpers. His hard-on is rubbing up against her thigh through his sweatpants. 

Nell holds very still. Pleasure is starting to pool in her groin, no doubt amplified by the connection between them. She bites her lip. She should wake him, surely, that’s what any normal person with a normal relationship with their brother would do. 

But Luke’s whimpers are turning into moans and his breath is hot on her neck and each grind of his hips is making her clit throb with pleasure and Nell really, really doesn’t want to wake him up. Tentatively, she moves a hand to the back of Luke’s neck and threads her fingers into his hair. He melts into the touch and his hips jolt. Nell closes her eyes, tries to force herself to think about anything besides her twin brother. James Halloway, the guy at school that all the girls in her grade have a crush on. The cute, shirtless guys she sees in some tv commercials. She even tries to think about her one charming English teacher at school, but it doesn’t work. Her mind keeps slipping back to Luke. He’s all she can smell, all she can see, all she can feel. 

Her eyes slip open again and she takes in Luke’s face. It’s slack, peaceful—whether that’s from sleep or from pleasure, Nell isn’t sure—but it’s a good look on him. 

The desire to kiss him hits her all at once, and it _aches_. Well, _kiss him_ may not be an accurate descriptor for what she really wants to do to him. She wants to consume him, wants him to consume her, she wants them to be together _forever_, to never let him out of her sight again. She wants to feel his every heartbeat and to entwine herself with him so closely that people wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. She wants his blood in her veins. The raw longing floods her all at once, and it’s hard not to just scream with the agony of it. 

Luke is oblivious, as he sleeps and grinds against her. She wonders what he’s dreaming about. She desperately needs the answer to be _her_. 

Luke’s jaw tenses and his breathing comes quick, short little huffs of pleasure as his ruts against her side grow quicker and more frantic. Then, his whole body tenses up, and under his breath, just barely audible, he says, 

“_Nell._” 

And then Luke is coming, and Nell knows that because she’s coming too. Her hand tightens on his neck as her body spasms, the orgasm rolling through her in waves. She clenches her teeth together, willing herself not to make a noise. 

And then, just like that, it’s over, and Luke’s gone slack again, breathing deeply against her shoulder. She removes her hand from the back of his neck and he makes a small, unconscious noise of protest. Nell stares at the ceiling and tries to return her heartbeat to a normal rhythm, evening out her breathing. Her pulse thuds in her ears. There’s no uncrossing that line. Luke will realize what happened when he wakes up, and he knows she’s a light sleeper—there’s no hiding from the fact that she let this happen. 

She just prays that he doesn’t bring it up. 

(He doesn’t, and it doesn’t happen again, but they keep sleeping together, side by side, any chance they can get.) 

  


**October 28th, 2019**

Luke is inconsolable. 

Nell has been dead for exactly one year, and it’s the closest he’s ever been to using again. There’s nothing he would love more than to soothe the agony he’s feeling, the jagged fucking hole in his chest. 

Her loss doesn’t hurt any less. Even after a full year, even with “Nell” around to comfort him, he misses her every day. It seems impossible, to go on like this, to live another forty years like this. It’s unbearable. His therapists, his sponsor, even his family keeps telling him that it’ll get easier, more bearable, as time goes on, but it _hasn’t_. Every time he wakes up, he still feels her loss as intensely as he did the day he found out. 

He only sees one way out. 

“Nell” tries to help. She threads their fingers together and looks up at him with her big, empty blue eyes, and tells him he has to keep trying, that things will get easier. He looks her in the eyes and he doesn’t see his Nell and he’s so _angry_, at her and at himself and at everyone in their family and at the stupid _house_. It all bubbles up, boiling in his veins, and he shouts at her. 

“Leave me alone!” 

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, she’s gone, just like she was never there at all. 

Luke gets in his car and programs the GPS to Hill House. 

  


**September 8th, 2006**

Nell’s been away at college for a week before Luke comes. 

She’s been at home, taking courses part time at the community college, for two years. She didn’t know what she wanted to be, out of high school, so she takes all of the most interesting classes she can find. _Stigma of Mental Illness in 20th Century Literature. Women in Business. Postcolonial Feminist Theory. Symbolism in Ancient Indian Art. _She even tries pottery. 

Finally, after two years of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks, living out of her aunt’s home still, she applies for a full time college. She puts her major down as Religious Studies. It fascinates her, religion: why do people turn to religion? What makes them put their faith into something so intangible? Why do they believe? How can she believe too? 

She transfers to a small liberal arts school. It’s small enough that she doesn’t get assigned a roommate in her dorm room. It’s quiet, has a heart. The buildings are old, and she spends her first night there lying awake in the dark, straining her ears for movement in the old walls. Listening for ghosts. 

She doesn’t hear any, though she hears gossip of ghost sightings among her peers. She wonders if they can tell, the spirits on campus, that’s she’s already been claimed. Hill House has already got her in its grasp, unwilling to let her go. 

Now she’s been there a week, been to all her classes twice, gotten to know the professors. It’s Friday night, but she’s in her room, getting ready for bed. There are probably parties out there, somewhere on campus, but she’d rather stay in. 

She thinks about Luke. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other. Things have been… hard. He took off after high school. Unannounced—one night he just never came home. That was the first night he put poison in his veins. She felt it, when he did it. The rush of euphoria. And then… nothing. 

The drugs, or maybe his absence, disrupted whatever it was they had between them. She rarely feels him anymore. It terrifies her. Would she even feel it if he died? If he was hurt out there somewhere, cold and alone? 

She prays for him. Every night, she sits at her desk and thinks about every god and every goddess she’s learned about from her courses. She prays to each and every one of them, begging them to keep her brothers and sisters safe. As long as they’re safe, everything will be okay. 

She’s just sitting down to pray that night when there’s a pounding at her door. Her heart pounds in her chest. A memory of being in bed, of pounding on the doors and windows all around her flickers in her mind for a moment, then fades. 

She pushes down the apprehension in her chest and goes to open the door. 

Luke. 

He looks terrible. His hair is unkempt, longer than he usually keeps it. He’s got dirt smudged on his cheek and tears smudged under his eyes and his lips are dry and cracking. His clothes are full of holes. He’s shaking, standing in front of her in the doorway, looking smaller than he’s ever been. 

“Nell,” he manages, but his voice is raspy and cracking. Before he can say anything else, she grabs his hand, tugs him inside. 

“Luke, what- are you okay? Where have you been? What happened?” 

Questions pour out of her mouth faster than Luke can answer them. He just shakes his head, stumbles over to the bed, and Nell follows him, laying a hand on his back to steady him. They sit next to each other and Nell tries to look him in the eyes, but he avoids her, staring pointedly at the bedsheets. He must be high, still. It checks out—she doesn’t feel him, even with him crying here in front of her. He takes a ragged breath. 

“She’s gone. I didn’t know where else to go. I’m sorry, Nell,” he gasps out. He’s starting to cry again and Nell takes puts a hand on his cheek, leans in, lets him wrap his arms around her. Up close, she can feel the sobs shaking his body. He’s crying into her shoulder, his tears wetting her shirt. She strokes his hair. 

“I trusted her, Nell, but she left, just like that, she left me, and none of it mattered. Nothing she said- nothing I said. She said she isn’t coming back. I didn’t know where else to go,” Luke repeats the last part, his words muffled by her shirt. His fists suddenly clench the fabric of the back of her shirt tightly, and she can barely make out what he says next. 

“Don’t leave, Nell, please don’t leave me,” he pleads, repeating the words over and over like a mantra. Nell holds him tighter. 

“I’m here. Luke, I’m here. I’m not leaving. I’ll never leave you, Luke, I’ll never leave you again, okay? I’ll never leave you,” she whispers into his hair. She starts to feel slightly crazed by how badly she wants to never let him go, never let him out of her sight again. Never let him put distance between them again. She needs to protect him, to keep him here, with her. She can’t let him go. She can’t leave him. He needs to understand. 

“Please, Nell,” he begs her, “prove it, I need you, I need- I need to know. Please, I need you to-” 

Nell cuts him off and shocks them both by pulling back and then kissing him, hard and desperate, trying to make him feel her again, trying to make him believe her. He goes still and she pulls back almost immediately, raises a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. Her face is flushed dark. 

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what-” 

This time he cuts her off.  


“Don’t stop,” he says, and leans back in. 

He kisses messily, pressing towards her like he wants her to consume him. Maybe he does. She holds his face and strokes his hair and lets him whimper into her mouth, lets him kiss her mouth and her jaw and her neck and hold her waist and she still feels his hands shaking. His stubble scratches her skin. She should hate him, hate herself for this, but she just wants to get closer to him, to never let this end. 

“I need to feel you,” she whispers into his mouth, and he nods. He understands. He always knows what she means in a fraction of as many words as anyone else. She thinks of when they were kids and barely even needed to talk to each other, and her chest aches. 

She presses him down onto the bed and gets on top of him, hands firm on his chest. She pauses to look down at him, suddenly unbelieving that he’s really there. He looks up at her reverently, silent. He looks like he’d do anything, if she’d only ask. 

She’s sitting just over his hips, and she can feel his dick pressing against her through the thin, tattered material of his pants. She tilts her head down and rolls her hips and he gasps under her, writhing. She starts a gentle rhythm, rocking back and forth on him. Sweat is beading on his forehead. 

“Nell, please,” he says. Nell raises a hand and strokes his face, cupping his cheek. He leans into the touch and closes his eyes. She hasn’t seen him look so peaceful in a long time. 

Gently, she leans back and undoes the button on his pants. He opens his eyes again and watches her, chest still heaving. She undoes the zipper and slides his pants and boxers down his thighs, exposing him. He avoids her gaze, looking embarrassed, until she moves again to position herself above him and grabs his cock, rubbing the head against her entrance. She’s wet already, has been since he put his arms around her. His head tips back and he gasps, thrusting his hips up in little circles to try to get more friction. 

She pauses for a moment, takes it all in. She wonders how many times, ever since that one night, that she’s thought about this, thought about him. She wonders if he’s thought of her. 

He begs her again, and Nell takes pity on him and lowers herself onto his dick, all the way to the hilt. The sudden feeling of fullness makes her gasp and she doubles down, resting her head on his chest as she breathes heavily and tries to adjust. Luke, for what it’s worth, is doing a good job of holding still, his eyes screwed up tight with pleasure. 

A few moments go by and Luke grips her thighs tightly. She can feel him now, feel how desperate he is for her to move. She feels his anguish and his loss and his fear and his love for her all at once, and the emotions overwhelm her as they crash over her. She knows Luke must feel her too. She grabs the side of his face. 

“I love you,” she manages out. It’s the only words she can make sense of through the swarm of feelings buzzing in her head. 

“And I love you the same,” Luke gasps out. Tears are welling in his eyes. 

Nell focuses on his voice and straightens up again, starts to move up and down on his cock. She tries to focus on the pleasure, wills him to do the same. She doesn’t know how much more she could take of his anguish. 

Luke seems to get the idea and he starts moving his hips to meet hers. Her head gradually starts to feel clearer, or at least, more focused on the singular goal of pleasing them both. 

It doesn’t take long for them to get close. It’s easy, when each of them feels the other’s pleasure, building an infinite feedback loop of ecstasy. 

Luke tries to warn her when he’s about to come, but she shushes him, leans in close. 

“It’s okay, sweet boy,” she tells him, kisses him, and that’s it. 

Orgasm hits them both at the same time. Nell clenches around him as she continues to ride him, and for a moment, she sees herself as Luke sees her, feels him coming inside herself. It’s overwhelming, and it feels for a bit like it’s never going to end, but eventually, the waves of pleasure subside and Nell collapses on Luke’s chest. She presses her ear to his chest and listens to his heart as it gradually speeds back down. 

They don’t need to exchange words. She can feel that they’re both content now, that fear and pain is gone, at least for now. 

Luke’s eyes are already slipping closed. He must be exhausted from whatever traveling he did to get there and whatever hell he was in before that. Nell slides off of him and settles down next to him, throwing one arm over him to hold him as they both fall asleep. 

_I’ll never leave you, _she thinks, and hopes he hears it. 

  


**October 28, 2019**

The lights are on when Luke gets to the house, like he knew they would be. 

This time, it’ll be different. This time, no one knows he’s here. 

He walks inside, steps over the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Dudley in the entryway. _Just more ghosts,_ he thinks. 

At the bottom of the spiral staircase, he stops. He sees himself there, sitting on the step. Himself as he was at six, when they lived in the house that summer. The younger Luke stands up and runs to the side of the room, where Luke notices six-year-old Nell is standing. The younger Luke takes her hand and they both smile at him. 

Luke turns away from them and heads towards the stairs. He feels something prickling at the back of his neck. He knows what he’ll see if he turns around now: the Tall Man, with his bowler hat and cane, slowly floating towards him. Luke grits his teeth. He can’t let anything distract him now. He squares his shoulders and starts heading up the stairs. Once he’s up there, the Red Room is just around the corner. He’s almost home. 

He finally makes it up the threshold after counting the stairs in sets of seven. He feels a flood of relief wash over him as the Red Room’s open door comes into his sights. _He’s almost home._

His father and his mother are standing in the hallway in front of the room. They don’t say anything, but watch him as he makes eye contact with Nell inside the room. She looks at him. He sees that glint in her eye, the glint that lets him know it’s really her. 

He continues down the hall. The Red Room looms in front of him. He stops in front of his parents, and Olivia smiles sadly at him. 

“It’s time to wake up, Luke.” 

Luke nods, and with that, he enters. The door slams shut behind him, and he almost laughs—he didn’t come all this way only to change his mind now. Nell is still in the same spot, looking at him. He steps closer. 

“I told you to live for me,” she says quietly. 

“I tried,” he replies. “For a year. I lived for you, Nell, and I was clean, and I was good. But it wasn’t living. It’s not living, not without you”  
  
He pauses. 

“You said you’d never leave me. It’s time to make good on that promise.” 

Nell hesitates a moment longer, but then she nods. 

She reaches out a hand, and Luke knows that if he takes it, there’s no going back. He’ll be gone, and he’ll be one with the house, and with Nell, forever. 

He takes it and doesn’t look back. 


End file.
